AHSS 2030 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Stranger Danger
16 Jun 2018
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Stranger danger: defending innocence, denying responsibility
• The oteporar Attepted/Aorted Adutio leged tpiall ioles the
abduction of a small child from its mother in a shopping mall or amusement park. The
child is taken into a restroom where its hair is cut and dyed and its clothes are
exchanged. The mother enlists the help of security agents who shut down all the exits.
The child is then rescued from the kidnappers, who are not apprehended. The
contemporary abduction legends are the current manifestation of traditional abduction
legends such as those about changelings, which provide structural similarities
• DISPOSING OF A CHANGELING
➢ Women working in field, puts baby in cradle and looks away, when she looks
back there is a different baby is ugly and small
➢ Father takes baby to edge of forest and threatens people in it, tells them to give
their baby back
➢ He looks away and the babies are swapped back again
➢ Relation to: It happened about 1800. A woman from Heidi in Scljord was on the
way to church to have her baby, a little girl, baptised. She took a short-cut with
the b Ay. For sane reason, she laid the baby on the ground and went behind a
bush for a moment When she came back and was about to pick up the baby, she
was completely terrified—she did’t reogize the a, Her eautiful little girl
had become so ugly that it was dreadful to see. Then the woman realized that
the huiders had been (here and exchanged the baby
• These “trager Dager legeds, hoeer, hae eoe part of a sigle ideological
domain to which folklore, news, literature and court cases belong" and they contribute
to the belief that children are at risk from strangers and that kidnappings occur at
alarming rates. The anxieties expressed in the contemporary legends are fed by, and in
retur feed, edia reports, iterest groups, itize atiis, ad politiias’ attetio
and endorsement All are partners in the creation and maintenance of the beliefs
concerning the menacing stranger.
• The Stranger Danger contemporary legends, particularly those dealing with abduction,
are informed by and parallel to contemporary media emphasis on the missing-children
phenomenon, which was a prominent social issue in the 1980s. The missing-children
apaig’s rhetorial stregth as that it foused on the image of the stranger
abduction, although it is known that only a tiny percentage of missing children are
abducted by strangers
• The claims-makers typically inflated, extrapolated, and conflated numbers of kidnapped
children with runaways, throwaways, lost children, and children abducted by estranged
parets uder the urella ategor of issig hildre, resultig i the
undocumented but often-cited figure of 1.5 million children who "vanish, disappear, or
are abducted each year
• The most atrocious examples of stranger abduction and murder were used to typify the
missing-children issue, implying that these were representative of the situation. The
campaign was triggered in 1981 after the kidnapping of Elan Fatz in 1979; it became
prominent in 13, he the TV doudraa Ada, ased o the kidappig ad
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Document Summary
Stranger danger: defending innocence, denying responsibility: the (cid:272)o(cid:374)te(cid:373)porar(cid:455) (cid:862)atte(cid:373)pted/a(cid:271)orted a(cid:271)du(cid:272)tio(cid:374)(cid:863) lege(cid:374)d t(cid:455)pi(cid:272)all(cid:455) i(cid:374)(cid:448)ol(cid:448)es the abduction of a small child from its mother in a shopping mall or amusement park. The child is taken into a restroom where its hair is cut and dyed and its clothes are exchanged. The mother enlists the help of security agents who shut down all the exits. The child is then rescued from the kidnappers, who are not apprehended. The contemporary abduction legends are the current manifestation of traditional abduction legends such as those about changelings, which provide structural similarities: disposing of a changeling. Women working in field, puts baby in cradle and looks away, when she looks back there is a different baby is ugly and small. Father takes baby to edge of forest and threatens people in it, tells them to give their baby back. He looks away and the babies are swapped back again.
